“Autocracy has a reverse: full power in case of success, but full responsibility in case of failure,” Alexander Dugin, a nationalist ideologue dubbed “Putin’s brain,” wrote on Telegram shortly after the announcement by the Russian military command about the withdrawal of troops from Kherson, in southern Ukraine. As the only provincial capital captured by Russia in nine months of war, for many nationalist voices its abandonment amounted to a humiliating defeat.
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Dugin – whose daughter, Daria, a right-wing activist like him who was killed in an attack in Moscow a few months ago – did not leave it at that.
Without mentioning the name of Vladimir Putin, he suggested that The autocrat who fails to deliver what is promised to his people may run the fate of the rain king, in reference to an African legend in which a monarch who fails to end the drought that has plunged his people into famine is assassinated.
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Although those phrases were later deleted and pro-Putin media said that Dugin’s account had been hacked, the ideologue did not produce an official denial. And the echo of his words sparked speculation about Putin’s weakness after the biggest military defeat suffered by his army in Ukraine. Not even the intense Russian bombardments of Ukrainian cities in recent hours have been able to change that perception.
Several Russian digital media even questioned the September referendums, which generated little credibility, since the enthusiasm with which the inhabitants of Kherson and dozens of cities have received the Ukrainian troops does not coincide with the supposed results of the votes, with more than 90 percent of the people supporting the annexation to Russia.
The Communist Party bench, an ally of Putin, asked in Parliament to summon the Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, to give explanations about the withdrawal from Kherson. The other government forces sank the summons, but the communists insisted on their criticism. And they were not the only ones.
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Popular blogs on the Telegram network such as Zloi Zhurnalist, a former Putinist, have been even harsher: “It is a massive geopolitical defeat for Putin and for Russia, the Defense Minister lost the trust of society a long time ago, and now the trust in the President is going to disappear…”.
free rein
Newspapers, bloggers and television commentators known for their nationalism and support for Putin have refused to endorse the official military account that it is a wise defensive move for troops to leave Kherson and cross to the east bank of the river. Dnieper, with the idea of consolidating their positions there.
Some recalled that the Soviet troops defending Stalingrad in 1942 never withdrew to the other bank of the Volga and that, thanks to their resistance, they defeated the Nazi invaders. Others criticized the failure of Russian artillery to hit the lines of advance and supply of the Ukrainian army. And the most radical wondered why Russia has not used its nuclear arsenal to finish off the enemy.
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This free rein to questioning is a novelty after months of unanimity. Unlike what happened a few weeks ago, when neither the failure in the siege of kyiv nor the human casualties nor the tank losses were reported to the public, the Russian defeats are now news.
As Ian Stubbs, a military analyst for the UK foreign service, said a few days ago: “Putin’s failures have become visible to the Russian people.”
Vladimir Solovyov, the host of the most watched television debate show, a great supporter of the invasion and of Putin, is no longer limited to insulting Western governments for arming Ukraine. Furious at the withdrawals, he now incites his fellow men to speak of the “incompetence” of the military and the “cowardice” of soldiers who refuse to fight.
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Comparisons with other Russian military disasters have not been lacking. In 1917, when the front against the German Kaiser’s troops collapsed during World War I, and in the late 1980s, when the defeated Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan. The first defeat opened the doors to the Bolshevik revolution and the birth of the Soviet Union, and the second marked the collapse of that Union and the end of 70 years of communism. Could defeat in Ukraine end the Putin era that began 23 years ago?
recession and poverty
Added to the problems on the military front is an economic and social crisis that is worsening day by day. Before the war, the Russian economy was already in the doldrums. Despite receiving, in 2020, more than 140,000 million dollars for its exports of gas, oil and derivatives, Russia was not among the 10 largest economies in the world (it was the 11th) and, in per capita income, it was located in 2021 in 68th place, far behind the developed economies.
Everything has gotten worse with the war and with the economic sanctions imposed by the West. Russia is already in recession and this year the GDP will fall 4 percent, a negative figure that could get worse in 2023. The drop in consumption will be 9 percent in 2022; that of exports, by more than 5 percent, and that of imports, by 25 percent.
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As a good oil country, Russia got used to using its gigantic flow of foreign currency to import four hands. The Western embargo has created shortages of thousands of products from food and manufactures to high-tech goods. Because of this, inflation shot up to around 15 percent. Food exceeds 20 percent.
The 17 million Russians in poverty that official statistics recognized before the war had increased by the middle of this year to 21 million, almost a million new poor per month of war. If this rhythm is maintained in the second semester and next year, due to the long recession that all projections predict, the situation could become explosive.
This deterioration is largely explained by the loss of 2 million direct jobs and more than 5 million indirect jobs due to the departure of 2,500 foreign companies. Economist Konstantin Selyanin, a market analyst in Moscow, argues: “We may be witnessing Russia’s biggest economic collapse” since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
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the offensive continues
All of this may become more entangled if Ukraine keeps advancing. On Monday, elite troops from Volodymyr Zelensky’s army landed on the western flank of the area where the Russians retreated after leaving Kherson. At the same time, there is heavy fighting for the Ukrainian advance in the axis of the cities of Zaporiya and Meritópol, in the central zone of the invasion. If Zelensky’s men manage to consolidate their positions there, they will cut the invaded area in two and tens of thousands of Russian soldiers will be trapped.
Even before the Kherson withdrawal, the Ukrainian advance into the north two months ago was enough to instill concern among Russian oligarchs. According to France-based Moscow political scientist Tatiana Stanovaya, “until September, the elites had pragmatically chosen to support Putin.” But with the military withdrawals, those elites are now “compelled to choose between various defeat scenarios, and that makes Putin more vulnerable.”
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In the last days, The bad news for the Russian leader has been piling up. Added to the military defeats are weighty geopolitical facts. The first is that Europe managed to consolidate its gas reserves to get through the winter, with which Putin lost the trick he played by cutting off the supply of the precious hydrocarbon to his western neighbors. The second is that Joe Biden’s Democrats managed to avoid a solid victory for the Trumpist Republicans in the congressional elections, which would have implied a severe brake on aid to Ukraine.
And the third fact is that on Monday, in Bali, at the G-20 summit that Putin did not attend, Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, held a three-hour meeting during which, although they did not resolve all their differences, they did establish mechanisms to reactivate dialogue and cooperation. A détente that is not exactly what Putin needs.
Biden asked Xi to pressure the Russian president into a peace negotiation. So did French President Emmanuel Macron. It cannot be ruled out that Putin has to give in. But with more than 100,000 casualties (between dead and wounded removed from the front), he will not come to the table as a winner, but defeated and even humiliated. That Putin has dragged them into this war to end up like this may be inexcusable for the elites and for the Russian people.
Putin, aware that he is weakening daily, did not want to be present next to his generals when they announced the Kherson withdrawal on television. Even so, no analyst is betting on an imminent outcome, such as a coup d’état engineered by the military, oligarchs or rebels within the Kremlin.
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Kirill Rogov, a renowned analyst at Indem, one of the most respected NGOs in Russia, does not believe that there will be “an archaic palace coup”. He rather thinks – as he explained to the British media – that the coup is underway, but in a “silent way”. “The sabotage of decisions – he added – becomes the most effective type of plot”. Refusing to carry out orders from Putin and those around him “does not imply high risks.”
For him, that passive resistance has already begun. If so, the regime will end up collapsing, perhaps in 2023, which would fulfill the prognosis that the brilliant Russian chess player Gary Kasparov made two days ago in an interview with El Mundo from Spain: “2023 will be the last year of the regime of Putin”.
MAURICIO VARGAS LINARES
FOR THE TIME
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